"Big Smooch" 00 2005

In Lafayette, just east of the Bay, Mighty Fine Guitars keeps a deep, rotating bench of one-off luthier flat-tops — a consignment and used shop where a Somogyi or a Sexauer might sit beside a Klein & Kauffman, a Heiden, or a Wingert, with vintage Martin and Gibson nearby. The room leans toward the individual makers of the American steel-string revival more than the production names, though Collings, Bourgeois, and Santa Cruz round it out. It reads less like a catalog than a well-kept collection.